The media's desperate attempts to try to link the EDL with Anders Brievek has prompted the organisation to issue the following statement:
OFFICIAL STATEMENT:
Unfortunately, due to some uneducated members of the media, blindly only reporting half a story, we have been forced to make another statement on the Norwegian terrorist Anders Brievik and further give attention to him, rather than the 94 innocent victims, their families and the people of Norway who deserve the attention as they recover from this tragedy.
It would seem shameful that journalists have been all too quick to link the English Defence League to this murderous creature, quoting from his blog that ‘on some occasions [he] had discussions with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use certain strategies (via facebook)’. We can categorically state that there has never been any official contact between him and the EDL, our facebook page had 100,000 supporters and receives tens of thousands of comments each day. And there is no evidence that Brievik was ever one of those 100,000 supporters. Even so, anyone who expresses any extremist beliefs of any kind, be it white supremacist, christian fundamentalist or Islamic extremists, they all get banned from the site.
We have a long and successful history of ridding this peaceful and patriotic organisation of anyone who doesn’t agree with our mission statement, or shows extremist beliefs. This includes successful stewarding of our demos, ensuring that any racists are removed from the areas, strict moderating on our forums and constant monitoring of our facebook pages and affiliated groups. It has been reported that Norway has some problems far-right groups and neo-Nazi organisations, in February, our friends at the Norwegian Defence League had many new supporters after our peaceful Luton demonstration. Unfortunately, due to irresponsible and libellous journalism, some of these new supporters believed the NDL to be a group to express their far-right and neo-Nazi beliefs. It wasn’t and the NDL did a fine job of quickly acting and banishing such unwanted fascists and putting the record straight that fascists are not welcome in the Defence Leagues, only patriots worried about the rise of extremism that causes unnecessary death and pain to innocent people. It is not known whether Brievik was one of those to be banished, but the fact that one of his aims was to set up a Norwegian version of the EDL, when there already was one, goes some way to showing that he hasn’t got a clue about the EDL movement.
If these pathetic and sensationalist journalists had bothered to give the due respect to Norway, its readers and the truth, they would have read the entire writings of Brievik and reported the whole story. They would see that Brievik talks about the EDL in a negative light because of our anti-extremist stance. They would have reported the facts, they would have reported our history of being anti-fascist, anti-violent and anti-extremist. They would have reported that Brievik also states on page 1438 of his document, ‘The EDL are in fact anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-Nazi. They have many members and leaders with non-European background (African and Asian)…EDL and KT (Brievik) principles can never be reconciled as we are miles apart ideologically…The EDL harshly condemns any movement that use terror as a tool, such as the KT. This is why, we, the KT, view the EDL as naïve fools.’
It couldn’t be made any clearer that Brievik did not like the way the EDL was a peaceful organisation, open to all, making our point through legal and democratic means, as Brievik recognises we do ‘The EDL is a democratic movement, they still believe that the democratic system can solve Britain’s problems‘. He even knew before hand that the EDL would harshly condemn his terrorist atrocity and his terrorist group, and as the leading anti-terrorist, anti-fascist, anti-racist organisation in the country, this is exactly what we have already done in our release yesterdayhttp://englishdefenceleague.org/extremism-strikes-in-norway/.
No form of terrorism can ever be justified and the taking of innocent lives, can never be justified. We are proud to stand strongly against all forms of extremism and we will continue to speak out against the biggest terrorist threat to our nation, Islamic extremism. With our next protest in the most extremist filled area of the UK, home to many past terrorists and no telling how many future terrorists, East London. Just last week, a Somalian national from the area went on trial for funding terrorism, so it is vitally important the law abiding citizens of this land make a stand to urge the government into decisive action to prevent the next act of terrorism and scene of devastation, again being in the UK.
Again, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Norway.’
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